Perhaps in none of the great industries is the failure to enforce the child-labor laws more general or complete than in the glass trade. There are several reasons for this, the most important, perhaps, being the distribution of the factories in small towns and rural districts, and the shifting nature of the industry itself. Fuel is the most important item in the cost of materials in the manufacture of glass, and the aim of the manufacturers is always to locate in districts where fuel is cheap and abundant. For this reason Pennsylvania has always ranked first in the list of glass-manufacturing states. Owing, mainly, to the discoveries of new supplies of natural gas in Indiana, the glass products of that state increased fourfold in value from 1890 to 1900.[117] When the supply of gas in a certain locality becomes exhausted, it is customary to remove the factories to more favorable places. A few rough wooden sheds are hastily built in the neighborhood of some good gas supplies, only to be torn down again as soon as these fail. Hence it happens that glass factories bring new industrial life into small towns and villages, which soon become to a very large extent dependent upon them. Almost unconsciously a feeling is developed that, “for the good of the town,” it will scarcely do to antagonize the glass manufacturers. I have heard this sentiment voiced by business men and others in several places. On the other hand, the manufacturers feel the strength of their position and constantly threaten to remove their plants if they are interfered with and prevented from getting boys. I shall never forget my first visit to a glass factory at night. It was a big wooden structure, so loosely built that it afforded little protection from draughts, surrounded by a high fence with several rows of barbed wire stretched across the top. I went with the foreman of the factory and he explained to me the reason for the stockade-like fence. “It keeps the young imps inside once we’ve got ’em for the night shift,” he said. The “young imps” were, of course, the boys employed, about forty in number, at least ten of whom were less than twelve years of age. It was a cheap bottle factory, and the proportion of boys to men was larger than is usual in the higher grades of manufacture. Cheapness and child labor go together,—the cheaper the grade of manufacture, as a rule, the cheaper the labor employed. The hours of labor for the “night shift” were from 5.30 P.M. to 3.30 A.M. I stayed and watched the boys at their work for several hours, and when their tasks were done saw them disappear into the darkness and storm of the night. That night, for the first time, I realized the tragic significance of cheap bottles. One might well paraphrase Hood’s lines and say:— “They are not bottles you idly break, But human creatures’ lives!”